The snow, the horse and the mountain. Towards a pluriversal understanding of natures and nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan

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Anne Gry Gudmundsdotter Sturød

The snow, the horse and the mountain

Towards a pluriversal understanding of natures and

nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan

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A PhD dissertation in Cultural Studies

The snow, the horse and the mountain

Towards a pluriversal understanding of natures and

nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan

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University of South-Eastern Norway Bø, 2019

Doctoral dissertations at the University of South-Eastern Norway no. 46

ISSN: 2535-5244 (print) ISSN: 2535-5252 (online)

ISBN: 978-82-7206-539-2 (print) ISBN: 978-82-7206-540-8 (online)

This publication is licensed with a Creative

Commons license. You may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Complete license terms at

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en Print: University of South-Eastern Norway

Cover photo: Magne Sturød

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Preface

When I was in Kyrgyzstan¹ for the first time in the summer of 2005, I was there as a tourist together with my boyfriend. I had briefly been acquainted with this mountainous country in Central Asia as part of a course I followed in post-Soviet studies at the University of Oslo. Intrigued by the fact that I knew hardly anything about this part of the world, and curious about this complex region stuck in between east and west both geographically and politically, I decided to go to explore the area myself.

Prior to the trip, I bought the Odyssey Guidebook on the Kyrgyz Republic (Stewart and Weldon, 2004), which opens with a welcoming note from Askar Akaev, the first president of Kyrgyzstan (1991–2005). The guidebook warmly recommended a stay with the donor-driven NGO Community Based Tourism (CBT) to experience the “real Kyrgyzstan” (Stewart and Weldon, 2004: 200). Curious to explore the authentic nomadic life and the celestial mountains, for which Kyrgyzstan was promoted, we booked a trip to the remote alpine lake of Song Kul.

When arriving at Song Kul Lake I was breath taken, partly due to the high altitude but mostly due to what I found as spectacular nature surrounding this lake located at an altitude of more than 3000 metres above sea level. Beautiful mountainous landscape surrounded the lake, some of the snow-capped peaks stretching more than 4000 metres above sea level. The young, rather unexperienced guide Azamat, told us, however, that this was nothing compared to the scenery he would show us the following day, a few hours’ ride away from the lake. Hence, our expectations were high but after six to seven hours in the saddle, the excitement turned to disappointment: Azamat’s spectacular scenery turned out to be a valley with a windy dirt road leading down to something which very well could have been any small pine forest in my native country of Norway.

We got off the horses and took some photos, but to Azamat’s disappointment we

1 While the country is officially called the Kyrgyz Republic, it is also commonly and colloquially known as Kyrgyzstan. I use a variation of both names.

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rejected his suggestion to ride further down the valley and into the forest. We rather wanted to go back to the spectacular mountainous area around the lake. The ride back to the yurt camp at Song Kul felt like an eternity.

This trip in 2005 was the start of a lengthy engagement with Kyrgyzstan. The experience later got me thinking about my own expectations and perceptions of nature. It also got me thinking about Azamat’s expectations and eager to show us his perception of beauty, which in this case differed from mine. It moreover led me to think how perceptions of and relations to nature differ between people and cultures and also perhaps that it might change.

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Acknowledgements

This dissertation has involved many human and non-human agents who in their relation to me, and in one way or the other, have contributed to making the dissertation what it has become:

I would first and foremost like to thank all my Kyrgyz informants, colleagues and friends for their immense help. I could never have completed this without their contribution, insights, assistance, hospitality and patience: Chong rakhmat!

Furthermore, I am very thankful to the PhD-committee at the University of South- Eastern Norway for granting me the opportunity to pursue a PhD and believing in my project. A special thank you goes to Aase Haukaas Gjerde and Helge Gjermund Kaasin, for giving me the time and space to do what I am passionate about. For that I feel very lucky!

I am deeply grateful to my principal supervisor Professor Inger Birkeland, who has guided me down this rocky path. She has pushed me, challenged me and supported me in every possible way, and I am truly, very thankful! I would also like to thank my co- supervisors Associate Professor Ingeborg Nordbø and Professor Hanne Svarstad who have given useful input and support throughout the process. In addition I would like to thank Professor Gudrun Helgadottir for giving me both personal and professional guidance, as well as other colleagues, PhD-scholars and friends at USN who have given me words of support and smiles at the coffee machine, even when I did not smile back.

Of all the people that have been with me on this journey, my family is who I want to thank the most. I am forever grateful to Ylva, Jenny and Magne who came with me to Kyrgyzstan. These months gave us all memories for life and even though it was not always easy, we will still remember these days as happy . I would also like to thank the Grødahl-Eriksson family for coming all the way from Norway to share wonderful days with us. Our friends and family who took care of our house, cat and other practicalities

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when we were away, should neither be forgotten. A very special thank you goes to you, mamma.

However, despite the importance that all these humans have had in fulfilling my goal, this dissertation would never have become what it has, had it not been for the places, the objects and the animals which I have explored in my articles. So even though thanking these non-human agents perhaps sounds strange, it still feels right for me to do so as I am indebted to their characters, features, visual appearance and most of all their ability to connect to me. Although they do not speak, I believe I somehow have been able to give them a voice through the insight brought forward in my research.

Anne Gry Gudmundsdotter Sturød 19.08.2019

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Abstract

Tourism has become one of the most common strategies for economic development in many poor countries. Moreover, tourism has become a force of globalization not only contributing to the mobilization of people and economic development but also to the spreading of values, information, knowledge and perceptions. While tourism is considered to be one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, nature-based tourism and eco-tourism are claimed to be one of the fastest-growing niches within tourism. At the same time, there is a move of tourism flows away from the traditional tourist destinations towards new and “unexplored” destinations. One of these destinations is the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, located in Central Asia.

This research project asks the question: “How does nature-based tourism contribute to changed perceptions and relations to nature in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan?” To explore this question, I look at the practices related to nature by humans, but also how nature and the non-human agency of nature affect and relate to humans; that is, how the materiality of nature is able to change human practices. I look at some very concrete material objects, namely the snow/coal, the horse and the mountain.

Based on my empirical material and interpretations of this, I have found that perceptions and relations to nature do partly change when tourism starts to develop.

However, perhaps more than changing perceptions and relations to the nature, nature- based tourism contributes to adding new perceptions and relations to nature, through new ways of enactment in the world. Nature-based tourism thus becomes a way for human and non-human actors to come into the world or “being in the world” both through new practices and new knowledge. These new ontologies do not necessarily replace each other, or exist separately from one another; they may actually co-exist and evolve within one another.

Keywords: Nature, nature-based tourism, Kyrgyzstan, Actor Network Theory, Political Ecology, the pluriverse

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List of papers

Article 1

Sturød, A. G. (2019). From coal to cool. Reordering nature in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

Tourist Studies, Vol 19 (2)

Article 2

Sturød, A.G; Helgadottir, G. & Nordbø, I. (2019). The Kyrgyz horse. Enactments and agencies in and beyond tourism. Current Issues in Tourism. DOI:

10.1080/13683500.2019.1626813

Article 3

Sturød, A.G & Birkeland. I. The political ontology of Kyrgyz mountains.

Manuscript submitted to Cultural Geographies.

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1 Introduction

Tourism has become one of the most common strategies for economic development in many poor countries (Kennedy and D’Arcy, 2009; OECD, 2009; UNDP, 2011; UNWTO, 2012a). This was once more manifested by the UN, which declared 2017 as the Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development ² (UNWTO, 2017a). It has become widely acknowledged that tourism does not only affect a country economically, but socially, politically, culturally and environmentally (see for example: Mathieson and Wall, 1982;

Mbaiwa, 2005; Pigram and Wahab, 2005; Pizam and Milman, 1986; UNWTO, 2017b).

While tourism can be studied from a business-oriented perspective, it can also be understood as a broader socio-cultural phenomenon. As such, tourism can be studied as a force of globalization, which not only includes mobilization of people and economic development but also the spreading of values, information, knowledge and perceptions.

Tourism has moreover proved to be an effective way of creating stories, self- consciousness and national identity (Frew and White, 2011), a mirror to the outside world about the supposed uniqueness and proud past of a nation. However, national or even local tourism development is often strongly connected to processes at a global level, far away from the place, object and people affected by tourism development.

Tourism can therefore be understood as a powerful tool of political and cultural influence between geographies of different scales. Moreover, it can be understood as a phenomenon that influences people, objects and places both in a material sense and in a non-material sense, through changes in perceptions and practices. This invites us to study tourism and its complexities in a critical and reflexive manner.

2The question if tourism is sustainable at all, given the link between air transport, CO2 emissions and climate change, is beyond the scope of this thesis and has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere (see for example Cohen, Higham and Cavalier 2011; Gössling, Hall, Peeters and Scott, 2010).

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1.1 Nature-based tourism and eco-tourism

While tourism is considered to be one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, nature-based tourism and eco-tourism are claimed to be one of the fastest-growing niches within tourism (Balmford, Beresford, Green, Naidoo, Walpole and Manica, 2009;

Kuenzi and McNeey 2008;). Based on a thorough review, Fredman and Tyrväinen (2010:

179) conclude that there is no universally agreed definition of nature-based tourism.

However, in previous research, nature-based tourism is defined as activities that people do while on holiday, which focus on engagement with nature and usually include an overnight stay (Silvennoinen and Tyrväinen, 2001). When it comes to the term eco- tourism, I use the definition developed by The International Eco-tourism Society (TIES), which defines eco-tourism as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education" (TIES, 2015). I thereby understand eco-tourism as a niche within nature- based tourism.

However, although widely promoted as a development strategy, nature-based tourism and eco-tourism has been subject to much critique (e.g. Charnley 2005; Duffy 2002;

Honey 1999; Kiss 2004; Lindberg, Enriquez and Sproule, 1996). In particular, nature- based tourism or eco-tourism has been criticized for being a new form of neo- colonialism (see for example Hall and Tucker, 2004; Lacey and Ilcan, 2014), where values between Western development agencies with a nature conservation agenda are in conflict with local inhabitants and their daily needs and desire for economic growth.

Akama’s (1996) study of nature-based tourism in Kenya, for example, shows how eco- tourism initiatives are dominated by Western environmental values, which differ from the local values, and where top-down Western management practices are in conflict with local needs. Meletis and Campell (2007: 853) argue that a “Western-inﬂuenced, pro-preservation and anti-extraction conception of eco-tourism, [masks] the heterogeneous nature of peoples, places, and activities that compose eco-tourism”. They moreover argue that the promotion of eco-tourism as being ‘non-consumptive’ is an

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inaccurate definition that might have severe consequences for both environments and people.

Hinch (1998) argues that Western environmental morals are not necessarily compatible with the worldviews of many indigenous people. Other studies, such as Coria and Calfucura (2011), argue that eco-tourism development projects often fail to be implemented successfully due to lack of financial resources, management skills and infrastructure. Several studies have moreover concluded that many eco-tourism projects in reality do not provide economic benefits to the local community (Cohen 2002; Coria and Calfucura 2011; Haller, Galvin, Meroka, Alca and Alvarez, 2008; Wells 1992). Other studies argue that eco-tourism contributes to a continuation of colonial power structures and marginalization of vulnerable groups (Duffy 2008; Hartwick and Peet, 2003; Southgate and Sharpley 2002). Fletcher (2009; 2014) observes that eco- tourism is both practiced and promoted predominantly by white, professional-middle- class members of post-industrial Western societies through the production of a

“romantic wild” (Fletcher 2014). Jamal and Stronza (2009) moreover call for a perspective on eco-tourism development that is not determined solely by academics, capitalist markets, conservationists or NGOs but also by locally defined and culturally embedded relations and meaning. Jamal and Stronza argue that the impacts of the macro-level international conservation policies are negotiated in the realm of the material and cultural practices at the local level and conclude that the locals change their cultural practices related to nature, as conservation knowledge arrives. In line with this, Cater (2006) holds that eco-tourism is a cultural construct based on Western ideas of nature conservation.

These studies are just a few examples of the literature that I have drawn upon in the work with this thesis. The above is by no means meant as a thorough or complete literature review on nature-based tourism as a development strategy, as this has been done by others (see for example: Campbell 1999; Spencley 2003). The studies are mentioned because they point to important questions of concern when it comes to

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nature perceptions and practices and how these are shaped by culture, history and geo- political contexts. It moreover feeds into a wider debate on nature understood as a social construct, which gained increasing attention from the 1980s onwards and which I will return to in Chapter 3: The study of nature. This debate has brought up some very important questions related to how power and knowledge determine our perceptions and practices towards nature.

While the popularity of nature-based tourism and eco-tourism is growing, so is the demand for new and exotic destinations. Elmahdy, Haukeland and Fredman (2017) find that a growing middle class, more flexible working hours and more demand for physical activity during leisure time, leads to an increased exploration of exotic natural destinations. One of these new destinations is Kyrgyzstan, a small landlocked country in Central Asia. The former Soviet state has in recent years experienced a rapid growth in tourism and was ranked among the top five destinations to visit in 2019 by the influential travel book publisher Lonely Planet (Lonley Planet, n.d.) After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and as part of a transition towards a market economy, Kyrgyzstan managed to attract the attention of foreign aid organizations, realizing the potential of Kyrgyzstan as a tourism destination. With its beautiful nature, rich fauna, and mountainous topography, Kyrgyzstan was soon promoted as a tourist destination of adventure, nature, and eco-tourism (Allen, 2006; Palmer, 2006). As in many other parts of the world and as part of the environmental policy effort, nature conservation has been linked to nature-based tourism and eco-tourism. This is evident in several strategy documents and assessments, such as “Assessment of biodiversity in Kyrgyzstan”, a report developed by USAID, which states that eco-tourism should be considered as one of the initiatives to ensure nature conservation (Chemonics, 2001).

Today the Kyrgyz government regards tourism development as one of the main steps for sustainable development of rural areas and job creation in Kyrgyzstan (NCSDK n.d., Shokirov, Abdykadyrova, Dear and Nowrojee, 2014). Moreover, in 2016 the World Travel and Tourism Council predicted that Kyrgyzstan is the country in the world where

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tourism will grow the fastest in the period 2016 to 2026 (WTTC, 2016). This shows the potential effect that the tourism industry might have on the Kyrgyz economy.

The impact of tourism on nature is particularly interesting to study in Kyrgyzstan, given that nature is the number one selling point when it comes to attracting foreign tourists to the country. Whereas other countries along the former “Silk Road”³ can promote themselves with architecture and archaeological sites, Kyrgyzstan has few such sites.

Instead the natural resources of the country are considered as having great development potential for tourism and recreation (Kantarci, Uysal and Magnini, 2015;

Schofield 2004; Thompson, 2004). However, Kyrgyz nature also has a meaning and value beyond that of hard currency. Mountainous landscape and nomadic traditions, with a focus on harmony between man and nature, has come to play an important role in the Kyrgyz national identity discourse (Nasritdinov, 2008; Petric 2015; Schofield and Maccarrone-Eaglen, 2011).

So far, there has been relatively little research on tourism as a socio-cultural phenomenon in Central Asia, let alone nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan (but for exceptions see: Allen, 2006; Nordbø, Turdumambetov and Gulcan, 2018; Palmer, 2006).

Studies from other regions, discussing how nature-based tourism and eco-tourism effect local communities, have therefore inspired the work with this thesis. Although Kyrgyzstan is not categorized as a developing country but rather a transition⁴ country, I have drawn upon literature on tourism in developing countries as I find many of the same discourses and conflicts from these studies at play in Kyrgyz tourism development.

3 The Silk Road is the name of the ancient trade route from the Middle East/Europe to China. The term has recently been relaunched as a regional tourism brand for the countries along the route through the Silk Road Programme (UNWTO, 2012b)

4 The term transition country is widely used for previous socialist countries that are/has been undergoing reforms towards market liberalisation (UN, 2014).

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1.2 Research question

The research question of my thesis is: “How does nature-based tourism contribute to changed perceptions and relations to nature in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan?”

The research question is timely to raise given a move of tourism flows away from the traditional tourist destinations in Europe and America, towards “new” and “unexplored”

destinations. Kyrgyzstan has become one of these new destinations, located outside the beaten track of most Western travellers but with an up and coming status as a destination for nature-based tourism and eco-tourism. Similar to other countries with rapid growth in tourism flows, it is a country that is experiencing changes, not only physically but also socio-culturally. Knowledge about how these changes occur and what consequences they have, for human and non-humans, is important not only in understanding tourism as a phenomenon but also in order to better plan and develop for tourism in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere.

But why Kyrgyzstan? This is a question I have often been asked throughout the last four years. There are several reasons why I chose Kyrgyzstan to conduct my research, some which can be answered from a personal point of view, while others are related to the topic I wished to explore.

First, Kyrgyzstan is a country which I have come to know from various engagements since 2003. My curiosity about this region first started with Russian and post-Soviet studies at the University of Oslo from 2003–2005. Following this, I visited the region both as a tourist during the summer of 2005 and later for a three-month field research in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as part of my MA thesis in Human Geography about water management in Central Asia (Rønningen, 2006). After a period of engagements in other post-Soviet countries (Russia, Estonia) I once more got the chance to work closely with Kyrgyzstan as a project leader for a joint educational cooperation

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between the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), three universities in Kyrgyzstan as well as three universities in Georgia.⁵

Second, and as referred to above, Kyrgyzstan is an interesting country in which to do research on changes and impacts of tourism, as international tourism is still a relatively new phenomenon. Unlike many other places in the world, one can still find certain places and people there who have yet to be exposed to international tourism. This gives ground to explore how tourism encounters contribute to processes of change and how this impacts understandings and relations to nature.

My initial idea was to study a tourism development cooperation carried out by the Norwegian Trekking Association (Den Norske Turistforening, DNT) in Kyrgyzstan. This was an initiative sparked off at the Global Mountains Summit in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in 2002. During the summit the Kyrgyz president at the time, Askar Akaev, asked the Norwegian delegation for help to develop mountain tourism (Løseth, 2006). The most concrete result of this idea was the establishment of the Trekking Union of Kyrgyzstan (TUK), an organization which offers various day tours, mostly in areas nearby Bishkek. Although I do include empirical material based on participant observation from several trips with TUK in Article 3, I did not end up making the TUK-project a central focus of my research. This is due to the fact that TUK targets upper- and middle-class Kyrgyz as well as expats living in Bishkek, while my interest has always revolved more around how tourism contributes to change in rural communities where tourism is a new phenomenon and is developed as part of the livelihood. My interest is also more on the local communities that are encountered with tourism, than on the tourists.

5 This is an ongoing project which is financed by the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education (https://diku.no/). The project aims to foster cooperation in the field of sustainable tourism and involves student and staff mobility, course development, summer schools, etc.

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Third, although the volume of tourism studies from Kyrgyzstan has increased throughout the last decades (see for example Alkadyrov, 2008; Boz, 2008; Jenish, 2017;

Kantarci et al. 2015; Sypataev 2004; Thompson and Foster 2002), very few have critically examined the consequences of tourism on local communities (but for exceptions see Allen 2006; Palmer 2006; 2007, Schofield and Maccarrone-Eaglen, 2011). Moreover, a report developed by the Mountain Societies Research Institute explicitly calls for more research about eco-tourism in Kyrgyzstan, especially related to economic and socio- cultural sustainability (Shokirov et al., 2014). Allen’s (2006) study makes an excellent contribution to the latter, discussing the impact of tourism developments on local communities in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Allen’s study nevertheless lacks an analysis of how community inhabitants who are not directly involved in the tourism industry are affected by tourism development. Allen (2006: 272) writes: “Their experiences can undoubtedly provide more diverse data that highlights how communities and individuals cope with changes caused by State policies and the actions of outside actors”. To engage with and bring forward voices of those not directly involved in tourism themselves, has thus been an important inspiration for my work. This is also in line with what Wooden and Stefes (2009:56) has noted as a general lack among scholars doing research in Central Asia, namely “work that has greater depth and that offers a clear picture of cultural political elements”.

Finally, and in order to answer my research question, I have drawn upon an analytical framework with concepts from both political ecology (PE) and actor-network theory (ANT). Surprisingly few scholars of political ecology and/or ANT have studied post-Soviet contexts (exceptions are Bruno 2011; Bolotova 2004) and in particular Central Asia/Kyrgyzstan (for exceptions see Agyeman & Ogneva-Himmelberger, 2009; Davidov, 2013; Fleming, 2014; Graybill, 2007; Wooden, 2017; Schmidt and Dörre 2011;

Kronenberg, 2013). I therefore see an opportunity to contribute and extend a growing body of ANT-oriented tourism studies as well as the analytical approach of political ecology to studies in a region relatively unexplored both by tourism scholars as well as scholars of political ecology and ANT more in general. By this, I also follow up on Wooden

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and Stefes (2009:51), who argues that Central Asian environmental studies are mostly policy driven, with little theoretical value and who calls for studies with “broader theoretical themes to allow comparability and insights into political realities”. As I will discuss and argue first in Chapter 3 and later in Chapter 6, political ecology has helped me understand my research field in terms of how understanding of nature is culturally constructed through structures of power and knowledge. While this has been important, I also needed an approach that allowed me to focus on the materiality of tourism, i.e. actual objects of nature. For this I turned to concepts of ANT, and studies of human and non-human actors, or what the French philosopher Bruno Latour (1996) has termed “actants”, and how they relate to one another.

1.3 Research design

I approach my research question through three articles where I look at three distinctly different materials of nature: the snow, the horse and the mountain. These particular objects or actants, are among the most featured in Kyrgyz’ nature-based tourism, which makes them particularly interesting to study in relation to the research question.

Moreover, they have become material objects of tourism within a relatively short time span, which makes them interesting to explore as it would be reasonable to think that tourism has exposed them to certain changes with regards to meanings, practices and values.

However, it was not a given from the start that I would focus on these objects. It was rather something which I gradually identified during the process, partly based on the empirical material which I produced during my field work. Although I will present the three articles and the findings later in Chapter 5, I will now give a brief explanation of how I ended up focusing on these particular objects:

In Article 1, the focus is on snow (as opposed to coal). This was something which came as a direct result of the first field research in June 2016, when I visited the up-and- coming ski destination Jyrgalan, a previous coal-mining town located in north-eastern

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Kyrgyzstan. As I will explain later, this field research gave me very rich data material about how the surrounding nature has come to be perceived and used differently due to tourism. Intrigued by my empirical findings from this mountain village, I decided to write an article where I focused on changed perceptions and relations to snow, which has become one of the most important nature assets for tourism in this village.

In Article 2, the focus is on the horse. This article came as a result of a pilot research which was initiated by my colleagues, Associate Professor Ingeborg Nordbø and Professor Gudrun Helgadottir at the USN. Their empirical material, collected during a short field trip in Kyrgyzstan in 2015, became an interesting starting point to reflect on the horse, which without doubt is one of the most featured tourism resources of Kyrgyzstan and is heavily used for externally promoting the country. I was invited into the research project and was able to build upon the material collected by Nordbø and Helgadottir when I conducted my own field work in 2016 and 2017. Helgadottir also joined me in parts of my field work in 2017.

Article 3, which I write together with Professor Inger Birkeland, is perhaps the article thematically closest to my initial plan. As mentioned in the previous chapter I was intrigued about the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) project in Kyrgyzstan. I was particularly interested to find out if the Trekking Union of Kyrgyzstan projects, which aimed to increase mountain tourism in the country, led to changed perceptions of the mountains among the local population. As explained in Chapter 1.2, I chose not to focus on this project per se, but rather on the Kyrgyz mountains in general as I was not interested in nature perceptions of tourists and trekkers, which was the main target of the TUK-project.

1.4 Structure of the thesis

The thesis is structured in the following way: In the next chapter, Chapter 2, I will give a brief historical and geographical background of Kyrgyzstan, while Chapter 3 gives an account of ontological and epistemological discussions with regard to the study of nature. This is also where I introduce the analytical approach and concepts which I use

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in the articles. Chapter 4 is dedicated methodology. Here I describe the two major field work projects that I carried out, I reflect upon my own role as researcher, I present the methods and empirical data used and I discuss ethical questions. Chapter 5 gives a summary of the three articles, while Chapter 6 discusses the results, presents the conclusion and contribution of the thesis.

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2 Kyrgyzstan: Historical and geographical background

Kyrgyzstan is located in the region known as Central Asia, bordering Kazakhstan in the north, China in the southeast, Uzbekistan in the east and Tajikistan in the south. Located along what is known as the Great Silk Road, the region became an important transit area for trade between Europe and China as early as 220 BC (Boulnois, 2004).

Figure 1: Kyrgyzstan (source: US Central Intelligence Service)

Before Russian expansion into the region in the second half of the nineteenth century, the region was predominantly part of the Khoqand Khanate – a multi-ethnic state with the capital Koqand located in the Ferghana valley in what is today Uzbekistan (Chotaeva, 2016). In pre-Islamic religious and belief-rituals were related to nature and very tightly linked with the natural environment (Sahin, 2017). Islam started to spread in what is present day Kyrgyzstan in the late ninth and early tenth century.

With the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in 1918, followed by a civil war between the White and the Red Army ending in 1920. In 1924 the Central Asian region was delimitated and the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic, renamed Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic in 1925, was established and marked what in modern terms would be called a nation (Chotaeva, 2016).

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Prior to the Russian expansion into Central Asia, the Kyrgyz people were predominantly nomadic, practising transhumant migration with livestock breeding and herding in the mountain pastures during summer and settling in the valleys during winter (van Veen 1995). With Russian and later Soviet rule this changed. Nomadism and transhumant migration were thought of as “backwards” (Beyer,2016; Kreutzmann, 2012) and the Kyrgyz nomads were settled in collective farms during the 1930s and onwards (Petric, 2015). This has later become known as “the Great Break” where the attempt was to overcome the traditional forms of life (Prozorov, 2014).

The region has been a turbulent area in terms of various shifting reigns from the Turkic Era, throughout the Mongolian empire of Genghis Khan and up until the Russian expansion in the 19^th century. The latter was accompanied by a subsequent struggle between Russia and Great Britain for control of the region, known as the Great Game.

After approximately seventy years of Soviet rule, the Central Asian states became independent in 1991. Unlike other Soviet republics, such as the Baltic countries, there had been little internal pressure for independence among the Central Asian republics and the new status as nation states came as somewhat of a shock (Tishkov, 1997). The status as an independent nation in 1991 was new and posed many challenges to the country, which was regarded as one of the poorest countries among the former Soviet republics. Due to the structural dependency between Moscow and the Soviet periphery, the disintegration of the Soviet Union had great impact on Kyrgyzstan (Spoor, 1999).

GDP fell by 50 per cent in the period from 1991–96, and by the end of the 1990s 64 per cent of the population was living in poverty (World Bank, 2009).

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001 sparked off new geo-political struggles as Central Asia and in particular Western-friendly Kyrgyzstan, was seen as a strategic region in the US intervention in Afghanistan. A US military base was established at the Manas airport in Bishkek to serve US operations in Afghanistan. This was a cooperation very much disliked by Russia and which, after pressure from the Russian president Vladimir Putin, was abandoned in 2014 (Kucera, 2018).

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Along with other former socialist countries, Kyrgyzstan is most commonly classified as a transition economy (UN 2014). The first president of the Kyrgyz republic, Askar Akaev, soon made a choice to bring his country from socialism to a market economy using a strategy of “shock therapy”. One of the main priorities of Akaev, during the 1990s, was to establish an attractive foreign investment climate to promote rapid economic reform.

By choosing a neoliberal development path, Kyrgyzstan gained a reputation in the West as a reform-friendly country and in return Akaev received substantial support by Western countries and international organizations that came to reform his country (Petric, 2015). Although having sought stronger links with Russia the last decade, Kyrgyzstan is often mentioned as the democratic lighthouse in Central Asia. Until 2019, Kyrgyzstan was the only country in the region which has had several presidents after its independence.⁶ However, the country has also experienced periods of political instability, including two revolutions (2005 and 2010) where the sitting president was overthrown (ICG, 2015).

The rapid reforms of privatization backed and promoted by the World Bank and IMF, have led to a heavily indebted state where industry and agriculture have largely collapsed (Petric, 2015). The level of poverty is still high, especially in rural and mountainous areas with an increasing number of outbound work migrants (Eurasian Development Bank/UNDP, 2015) and the world’s highest share of GDP based on remittances (35 per cent) (McCarthy, 2018). The migration has caused a situation of

“brain drain” where many educated Kyrgyz leave to take better paid, but lower ranking jobs, in other countries, especially Russia (Thieme, 2012). Livestock is the main source of livelihood for people in rural areas with most of the farmers with no formal education within agriculture (Swinnen, Van Herck and Sneyers, 2011).

6 Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have also had changes in presidency, but in both cases, this was due to the death of the sitting president (Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan and Saparmurat Niayzov in Turkmenistan).

Kazakhstan held its first ever presidential election in June 2019.

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With independence, and in the void after socialist ideology, the Islamic religion has been revived. It is important to note, however, that various religious and belief rituals were formed among the Kyrgyz community and in the geography of Kyrgyzstan, with a mix of animism and Islamic beliefs.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the socialist ideology was replaced by a new nationalist discourse where harmony between man and nature was seen as essential part of the Kyrgyz culture (Murzakulova and Schoberlein, 2009). Nomadic traditions were popularised as part of the cultural heritage and used in the new national discourse and are today portrayed as something positive (Kerven, Steimann, Dear and Ashley, 2012; Beyer 2016). Epics, in particular the grand national epic Manas but also lesser epics such as Kojojash, which had been condemned as too nationalistic and even religious, during the Soviet period, were now popularized. The epics have been interpreted as:

… strong ecological message to the people, i.e., to respect and preserve nature and animals by making proper use of them but not exploiting them. It shows that the people are not the masters of nature. It tells that we, the humans and animals alike, are all children of nature and that animals also have a soul and feelings like human beings and that they also love their children and family as we do (Köēümkulkļz, 2004).

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 coincided with an increased global attention on environmental issues towards the turn of the century. It can be argued that this has empowered the Kyrgyz national discourse, emphasizing ancient nomadic beliefs of harmony between nature and humans. With the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and global policy documents such as Agenda 21, much donor-supported activities in Kyrgyzstan during the 1990s were related to nature conservation, biodiversity and environmental sustainability. Many research reports on issues such as pasture degradation (Baibagushev, 2015; Kerven et al. 2012) were produced in the period after its independence along with various agreements, such as the UN Framework Convention

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on Climate Change in 1992 and the Convention on Biodiversity which was ratified in 1996 (Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Kyrgyz Republic, 1998). In the Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, it is stated that despite the social and economic difficulties of the transition period, nature protection issues have been made a priority in state policy (Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Kyrgyz Republic, 1998).

The Rio meeting also contributed to putting mountains on the global environmental agenda. This awarded Kyrgyzstan a special place of concern, which together with president Akaev’s extensive outreach to Western countries and donor organizations, gave Kyrgyzstan a position in the network of other mountain countries, such as Switzerland (Debarbieux and Rudaz, 2015). Switzerland was also the country that encouraged Kyrgyzstan to pay attention to the vulnerability of mountain issues and to engage in what UN declared The International Year of Mountains in 2002 (UN, 2000).

Nature therefore became an important part in building the new national discourse of Kyrgyzstan, imposed from both national and international level. At the same time research claims that the Kyrgyz environment has suffered from extensive overgrazing, degradation of fragile mountain pastures and de-forestation resulting in dramatic losses of biodiversity resources and a need for immediate protection (Farrington, 2005).

Despite concern for issues of degradation, nature has become the number one selling point in tourism. This is evident in the Odyssey Guidebook for the Kyrgyz Republic, which opens with a quote from the former president Askar Akaev

You can visit the lake of Issyk Kul […] and the snowy peaks of the majestic Ala Too mountains, which attract mountain climbers and rock climbers from all over the world. A number of ski bases are also now welcoming visitors. Adventure tourism, such as trekking, hunting and rafting, are also on offer (Stewart and Weldon, 2004:

1).

The potential that nature holds for developing tourism in Kyrgyzstan, has been clearly emphasized among researchers and policy makers. A recent report on trends and challenges in the tourism sector in Kyrgyzstan, published by the Institute of Public Policy

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and Administration at the University of Central Asia, introduces Kyrgyzstan in the following way:

Nestled between the magnificent Tien-Shan and Pamir-Alay Mountains, Kyrgyzstan is blessed with a stunning variety of landscapes and ecosystems including lofty mountain peaks and glaciers, alpine pastures and lakes, flower-covered valleys and rivers, arid canyons and semi-deserts. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan boasts a rich historical and cultural heritage encompassing Asian nomadic traditions and many ancient civilizations along the Silk Road (Jenish, 2017:7).

The report argues that despite this rich natural endowment, tourism has a much higher growth potential. The report moreover points to a difference in demands among tourists. While tourist from CIS countries mostly prefer vacations along the Issyk Kul Lake, famously known for beach resorts, adventure products such as trekking, climbing, horse riding and skiing, are the most popular products among tourists from Europe, the USA and Japan.

Tourism flows from other Soviet republics to Kyrgyzstan, were important also during Soviet times, with about 1 million tourists annually in the 1980s, (Export.gov, 2019) mostly concentrated around the Issyk Kul Lake.

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Figure 2: An Issyk Kul beach resort near Karakol. (Photo by author)

The north shore of the lake was developed for tourism purposes since the 1950s and was considered a popular recreational area with more than one hundred sanatoriums,⁷ holiday resorts and children’s holiday camps (Supataev, 2005). Tourists from outside the Soviet Union, however, were a rare sight, as the country was more or less closed to visitors from other countries until its independence in 1991 (Schofield, 2004). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tourist arrivals declined by nearly 90 per cent by the end of the 1990s. Almost thirty years later, the number has rebounded and the recorded number of visitors to Kyrgyzstan for the year 2017 was 1,3 million and tourism

7 Among the sanatoria was the famous Jety Ögus sanatorium, known throughout the Soviet Union for offering radon water and hydrogen sulphide treatments, and also the sanatoria in Tamga in the south shore of Issyk Kul lake, known to host famous cosmonauts, such as Juri Gagarin, upon return back from space.

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accounted for 4,8 per cent of the GDP in 2017, compared to 3,5 per cent in 2006 (National Statistical Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic, 2018).

Figure 4: Number of tourist arrivals in Kyrgyzstan (source: National Statistical Committee of Kyrgyz Republic)

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3 The study of nature

A study of changed perceptions and practices related to nature soon brings ontological and epistemological questions to the table. Substantially it brings up questions such as:

What is nature and how can we study it? Is it possible to study nature as a separate realm? What is it actually possible to know about nature or the world in general?

How these questions are answered is closely connected to the research discipline and research traditions from which nature is studied.

Although ideas of nature are as old as humanity, the scientific view of nature as we know it dates from the Enlightenment and up until today. Since then and until today, many scientists have tried to describe and explain nature, with an underlying assumption that there is an independent reality, which can be studied through a value-free and objective scientific method, and where the scientist is detached from what she is researching. This way of understanding the world, which Descola (2013) categorizes as naturalism, presupposes a singular reality independent of human perceptions where human behaviour is seen as contextually bound in a real world of concrete and tangible social relationships (Morgan, 1983).

Social constructivists have challenged this understanding of the world, pointing to how power relations and cultural codes construct our understanding of nature (Castree and Braun, 1998). The underlying epistemological assumption here is that nature is intrinsically social and that it is not possible to study the reality in a neutral manner, separated from the social. Through this understanding our acting in the world will always be contingent and perceived through our cultural lenses (Nustad, 2015). Social constructivists deny that it is possible to talk about truth and objectivity in a universal sense and rather claim that our knowledge of the world is contingent upon our understandings, ideas, presuppositions and experience. This again raises the question whether there exists a reality beyond our understanding.

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A critique against the constructivist argument has been that it fails to acknowledge the physical reality of nature (Demeritt, 2002). While radical social constructivists would claim that it does not and therefore deny the idea of scientific realism, a more moderate form of social constructivism does not deny that the material world does indeed exist and is what we base our understandings, meanings, values etc. on (Godfrey-Smith, 2003).

While acknowledging that nature consists of physical and concrete features, creatures and objects, my research approach draws on an ontology and epistemology that sees human relations to nature as strongly connected to cultural, socioeconomic and political factors (Escobar, 1999:1). However, and although it might seem like a contradiction, my research also draws upon research that questions the way nature has been socially constructed as separate from the social and cultural realm. With this approach, I draw upon critical studies that claim that a particular binary construction of nature and culture occurred and developed along with industrialization in Europe and North America throughout the last few centuries (Cronon, 1996; Latour, 1993; Nustad, 2015).

This is what many social scientists see as a transcendence to modernization, thereby claiming that the nature/culture dichotomy is a modern Western phenomenon.

In the next section, I will go more into depth in this thinking, and also relate this discussion to the geographical and political context of my study.

3.1 The binary construction of nature/culture

That physical nature represents an objective reality that can be explained and thus represents a reality located outside of humanity and which may be understood scientifically, has become embedded in Western philosophical thought. Geographer Neil Smith traces the modern conception of nature back to the British philosopher Francis Bacon and “his enthusiastic advocacy of the mastery of nature”. Smith (2008:13) writes:

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[With] Bacon onward it is commonplace that science treats nature as external in the sense that scientific method and procedure dictates an absolute abstraction both from the social context of the events and objects under scrutiny and from the social context of the scientific activity itself.

Through this worldview, nature was seen as a passive object, without agency, to be used and worked by humans (Williams, 1972). From an ontological point of view, the natural science approach to nature has traditionally been a positivistic one, assuming that nature can be understood as objective entities and in separation from our epistemological perspectives. Although challenged, this ontological understanding of nature is still dominant in natural sciences today. Acompora (2008:3) claims that “many if not most environmentalists are naïve naturalists in the sense that they believe in the

‘objective outdoors’ – an external world existing beyond human edifice and mentality”.

Milton (1999) has moreover found that, this version of environmentalism is most widespread in Western industrial societies, while Eder (1996), argues that this understanding of nature is typically fostered by non-governmental environmentalist organizations.

While nature is seen as something objective, culture has come to be considered as something other than nature. Whereas nature has come to be understood as something which can exist separately from humans, culture is implicitly understood as something

“made up” by humans, something which is contingent on humans. Many scholars have questioned the binary construction of culture and nature, and especially that the separation of the two often is taken for granted, in Western society. Habermas’ (1987:2) critique of what he terms “scientific knowledge” has been influential in this critique.

Habermas believed that “modern science has divorced itself from the means of understanding its social context” (Unwin, 1992:41). In this lies the understanding that our knowledge of nature and the environment are socially constructed, and that the nature/culture divide has become part of what Gramsci would call cultural hegemony (Stoddart, 2007) of Western modernism through discursive practices.

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The French philosopher Bruno Latour has come to be known as one of the greatest critics of the distinction modernity makes between society and nature. Rather than seeing nature and culture as separate categories, Latour (1993) attempts to reconnect the two. He argues that social scientists fail to understand the world if we only manage to explain the world with the very same pre-determined categories as the ones we are trying to explain. In other words, it does not make sense to explain culture with reference to culture. Latour (1993:104) writes:

[T]he very notion of culture is an artifact created by bracketing Nature off. Cultures – different or universal – do not exist, any more than Nature does. There are only natures-cultures, and these offer the only possible basis for comparison

Latour calls for a relational ontology where we need to break away from the modern separation of culture and nature, but where we rather understand reality as hybrid relations. Through such an understanding the categories nature and culture are divisions which we have imposed upon the world (Braun, 2008). However, while the divide between nature and culture might be the product of a modern, discursive dichotomy, it is nevertheless mirrored in actual policies and nature-management practices such as protected areas and nature conservation. Using Australian conservation policies as an example, Mulligan (2001) show how such policy instruments can contribute to a sharper dichotomy between nature and culture since nature when declared for protection, often is physically marked off. Mulligan argues that this leads to a “frontier mentality”

(Mulligan, 2001: 25) and rather calls for conservation that is able to affectively bond humans and the land, inspired by the Aboriginals ability to “listen to the land” (Mulligan, 2001: 31).

In the next section I will discuss nature construction in a socialist/post-socialist context and why I argue that eco-tourism and nature-based tourism can be understood as a political instrument in Kyrgyzstan.

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3.2 Western vs socialist/post-socialist nature constructions?

The dualism of nature/culture described above has often been explained by critical social theorists as a product of Western capitalism. However, there are studies showing that this binary construction also was dominant in Soviet and socialist ideology. Snajdr for example (2011:22) notes that the “communist environmentality, which, through the configuration of nature as passive, appeared to place a decisive boundary between the realms of nature and culture”. The Soviet citizens were indoctrinated through education and media to view industrial complexes as “monuments of progress of socialism”

(Snajdr, 2011:25). Natural resources were primarily something that should be used for the purposes of the human being.

Bolotova (2004:105) has moreover shown in her research on environmental discourses in the Soviet Union, that the popular socialist discourse characterized nature as wild and hostile, and as opposed to man, where “Romanticizing exploration and exploitation of the nature was characteristic of the Soviet epoch”. Groys (2011:122) draws it even further and claims that “Soviet power demonstrated […] a deep, almost instinctive aversion to everything natural”. This hostility towards nature has been further exemplified by a quote from Maxim Gorky, the founder of socialist realism, stating that:

“nature is acting as our enemy and we must unanimously wage war against it as an enemy” (Gorky cited in Dobrenko, 2007:80).

Bruno (2011) notes that there has been done less research on the environmental history of communism as opposed to capitalism. He compares Soviet environmental history with that of Western environmental thought and argues that the process of “attempting to make nature modern” had been a continual and unified process from the late imperial era throughout Soviet socialism and until today (Bruno, 2011:26). He argues that the human–nature relation in post-Soviet thought is not necessarily a product of socialism.

Rather, Bruno argues, the human-nature relation has been part of a longer, ongoing process where nature has become imagined as a set of resources that simply needed productive labour to realise their value and allow for regional modernization. Bruno

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(2011) suggests that it was not the type of economic system (capitalism or communism) that mattered in terms of altering the human–environment relationship, but that both systems were driven by a common process of economic modernization, where nature played more or less the same role in the process. This adds to Short’s (1991: 19–20) argument that “conquering of the wilderness” has been present in the nation-building process in many states throughout the world. Nature becomes part of a civic form of nationalism where certain values and relations to nature have been used in order to build national identity.

Despite similarities between the Western and socialist versions of the binary construction of nature/culture, it does not necessarily mean that they are articulated in the same way in Western and socialists contexts or identical “outcomes” or practises.

Prozorov (2014) claims that scholars, such as Foucault, have subsumed Soviet socialism as part of Western rationalization and by that missed important distinctions. Prozorov argues that the socialist revolution, and the aim of transcendence to a socialist society, make the governing practice of the Soviet, and in particular Stalin, unique as it aimed to change nature and humans into something else, not just govern and control them.

Hoenig’s (2014) study of nature in socialist Poland, underlines this, showing how socialism constructed an identity around the transformation of man, society and environment, where large-scale industrial projects, factories, coal mines and gigantic dams became of symbolic and economic importance. Hence, in the Soviet case, it makes sense to talk about a constructed nature, both from a constructivist social science perspective and in a more direct sense as socialism as ideology aimed at transcending nature, including the human being.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a wave of Western literature and reports on the disastrous environmental damages of the Soviet Union (see for example: Bowers, 1993; DiLorenzo, 1992; Pryde, 1991). The focus on environmental disasters such as the Chernobyl accident, the shrinking of the Aral Sea and other “dirty secrets” of communism (Peterson, 1993:2) in Western environmental discourse, has been highlighted as “proof” of the failed socialist system and the neglect of nature in Soviet

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Union. While the socialist relation to nature is often portrayed as man against nature, it should be noted that some Western scholars, such as Farrington (2005) have pointed out the socialist system made schemes to protect nature, such as the establishment of protected areas (zapovedniki). Others, such as Sievers (1998) have claimed that the Soviets were much devoted to environmental protection. Weiner (1999) has moreover claimed that environmental issues were one of the few zones of relatively free speech in the Soviet Union.

Although there is no doubt that nature-management practices during the Soviet period caused many disastrous effects, it is important to keep in mind that much of the literature referred to above has been coloured by an ideological divide (neoliberalism versus socialism). Rather than reproducing claims of the bad Soviet nature management, I find it more interesting to point to how the failure and break-up of the Soviet Union granted Western environmental scientists and experts a “right” to intervene in issues regarding nature management and environmental issues in the region. Nature conservation, biodiversity and climate change were not only issues of general concern but became a powerful instrument to gain political control and renewed legitimacy for being involved in Russia’s backyard.

In line with this, nature-based tourism and eco-tourism have become important policy instruments which could unite nature protection as well as a transition to market economy. Nature-based tourism and eco-tourism as a development strategy can be understood as a form of governance, where Western idealization of nature as something separate from humans is paired with market-oriented nature politics (Lacey and Ilcan, 2014; West and Carrier, 2004). Moreover, and as noted by Wooden and Stefes (2009), many Western and local researchers conducting studies in Central Asia, have been dependent on donor financing where the research has been mostly policy driven.

In the following section, I will elaborate further on how I understand and relate the above with reference to the analytical approaches that I use in my articles.

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3.3 Analytical approach and concepts

The above discussion indicates that there are several binary constructions that could be explored in relation to the research question: that of nature/culture, modern/pre- modern, communism and capitalism. A critical question that arise is this: If these binary constructions are constructed, how can we study the world without referring to the very same categories as we have constructed? To venture this, I find it necessary with an analytical approach, which allows for a critical perspective on nature construction. At the same time, I have turned to concepts that are able to challenge the normative and structural explanatory factors that commonly have been used in critical tourism studies (as discussed in Chapter 1.3), and rather look at actual ongoing processes of change. In other words: I wanted to relate local and global tourism development, and questions of power/knowledge, to that of concrete, material objects “on the ground”.

For this, I have found it useful to draw upon two analytical approaches: political ecology (PE) and actor-network theory (ANT) which I now will describe separately:

3.3.1 Political ecology

The research field political ecology is explained as developing in opposition to the positivistic stance on nature in natural sciences, during the 1970s and 80s (Robbins, 2004). It moreover came about as an effort to bring the natural and social sciences into conversation (Chagani, 2014). Despite the diversity, political ecology research is united in an effort to show how nature is politically constructed (Hvalkof and Escobar, 1998) as well as to understand how the relationship between humans and the environment is produced, reproduced, and altered through discursive and material articulations of nature and society (Mostafanezhad, Norum, Shelton & Thompson-Carr, 2016). In other words; how our understanding and ways of relating to the nature is shaped by politics and subsequent power structures. Bridge, McCarthy and Perreault (2015) argue that political ecology should not be characterized by its research topics but rather its common commitments. These commitments are divided into first, the “theoretical commitment to critical social theory and a post-positivistic understanding of nature and

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the production of knowledge about it, which views these as inseparable from social relations of power”. Second, “methodological commitments, to in-depth, direct observation involving qualitative research of some sort, often in combination with quantitative methods and/or document analysis”. And third, political ecology is characterized by a normative political commitment to social justice and structural political change (Bridge et al., 2015:7, italics original).

Roderick P. Neumann’s (1998) study of African wilderness has become an important reference within political ecology studies. In his seminal book Imposing Wilderness, Neumann looks at the way our knowledge and understanding of nature also affects the way nature is being managed. In this book he shows how the idea of wilderness, or the idea of how “Africa should look” (Neumann, 1998:1), is culturally constructed by

“educated Westerners” who “recognize certain landscapes as natural in part because we have been trained to expect a particular vision through centuries of painting, poetry, literature and landscape design”. Neumann (2005) moreover argues that biodiversity has been constructed as an object of global concern in the 1980s in a top-down manner, through a Northern narrative that stresses biodiversity as a common heritage of humankind. Along the same line Escobar (1998:53) argues that “although biodiversity has concrete biophysical referents, it must be seen as a discursive inversion of recent origin” and that biodiversity therefore must be studied in the interface between nature and culture, originating from a vast network of sites and actors. This view of discursive sites and actors is quite similar to what Maarten Hajer has termed discourse coalitions, which he defines as the “ensemble of a set of story lines, the actors that utter these story lines, and the practices that conform to these storylines, all organized around a discourse” (Hajer, 1993:47).

Neumann (2005) is concerned with the power dimension of narrative constructions and how this affects nature management. Power is a central issue of concern among political ecologists (Svarstad, Benjaminsen and Overå, 2018) and many political ecology studies draw upon the French philosopher Michel Foucault and his understanding of the relationship between power and knowledge. Foucault argues that our knowledge is

The snow, the horse and the mountain. Towards a pluriversal understanding of natures and nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan

The snow, the horse and the mountain

Towards a pluriversal understanding of natures and

nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan

A PhD dissertation in Cultural Studies

The snow, the horse and the mountain

Towards a pluriversal understanding of natures and

nature-based tourism in Kyrgyzstan

Preface

Acknowledgements

Abstract

List of papers

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

Table of contents

1 Introduction

1.1 Nature-based tourism and eco-tourism

1.2 Research question

1.3 Research design

1.4 Structure of the thesis

2 Kyrgyzstan: Historical and geographical background

3 The study of nature

3.1 The binary construction of nature/culture

3.2 Western vs socialist/post-socialist nature constructions?

3.3 Analytical approach and concepts

3.3.1 Political ecology